Ceramicist Christa Assad, named 2012 Ceramic Artist of the Year, holds a ceramics workshop for Union University’s art department April 17.
By Jake Fain
Staff Writer
Award-winning visiting artist Christa Assad, who has worked in the field of ceramics for 20 years, led a two-day ceramics workshop this month on campus.
The workshop, during which Assad demonstrated her unique and personal form of sculpture, took place April 17-18 and was open to all art majors.
The first day began with what Assad calls her “two-day format.”
She usually begins by working with wet clay and showing students and other observers how she begins her pieces, she said.
On the second day she planned to cut the forms into pieces classified as “nontraditional.”
“These pieces may seem to come from industrial history,” Assad said. “I’d say they are edgy and urban; it sort of gives off the sense of living in a city.”
To add even more to the urban feel of her work, Assad constructed ceramic spray cans and paint cans that she battered with tools and paddles to give them a genuine factory look.
Assad also works with an assisting graffiti artist to give these pieces the look of street art and said she draws her inspiration from such pieces by exploring the streets of San Francisco.
She also observes the designs of architecture, obsolete types of construction from a more industrial era and the outlined shapes she sees in a horizon’s lighting.
After the two-day workshop, Assad hosted an informative photo presentation that revealed more about herself and her work.
Paige Ward, art department shop technician, contacted Assad at the request of Lee Benson, professor of art and department chairman.
Assad grew up with a father who was a designer by trade and and said she never thought she would follow in his footsteps.
However, while studying at Penn State University, she traveled to Europe and discovered that she did have a passion for the arts.
Assad then changed her major to art with an emphasis in ceramics, and her industrial form of ceramics has been an attention-getter from the beginning.
She also has designed utilitarian ceramics.
All of her pieces tend to serve a purpose rather than simply functioning as display pieces. However, in the past several years, her work has begun to take on more of a sculptural design.
One theme has become her most popular: her line of larger-than-life hand grenades. The grenades vary in their design and have become a staple in Assad’s current ceramics work.
Assad recently received Ceramics Artist of the Year for 2012, a national award given by “Ceramics Monthly” magazine.
“I suppose it came right when I needed it,” Assad said. “I mean, you wonder why you’re doing what you’re doing, and then you’re being recognized for your own brand of work. Not much is guaranteed to you in this field, so it was great to get that recognition.”